


To catch a butterfly with broken wings

by artisttrash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Constipation, Jealousy, M/M, Misunderstanding, Pining, Slow Burn, assertive!Cas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-14 16:23:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2198631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artisttrash/pseuds/artisttrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He leans in and brushes his nose against Dean’s earlobe, puffing a small gust of air down his neck. As if on cue, he feels Dean stiffen, back ramrod straight when everything about the other obviously isn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Allure

**Author's Note:**

> Yuh. Cas has had enough. That's all there is to this. I don't even know.

There are these small things that make Castiel fall in love with his Father’s creations.

In the morning, when the grass is fresh with dew and the air still has the crispness of night, he likes to go out. He’s up before even the birds start singing, and he falls in love with the moment of tranquillity and quiet the dawn provides. It gives him time to think, he once told Sam, who looked at him incredulously when he mentioned his routine.  
He carved his own little heaven in the space between the dead of the night and daybreak, a space he could only wish to find in heaven.

More often than not, his return is awaited by a cup of coffee and a homemade muffin. He savours these small gifts, because things given to him by the Winchester brothers are nothing less. 

Sitting at the oaken table, he sips at his coffee, eats his muffin and waits for the first signs of the Winchesters rousing. He knows their routine by heart, knows the sounds they make as they shuffle around and how they drink their coffee in the morning; Sam with two cubes of sugar, Dean with a lot of cream. 

When they come into the kitchen, Sam grunts a good morning and Dean looks at him like he’s insane for being up so early.

The mornings after hunts are, contrary to normal ones, slow. Castiel takes his time in bed, savouring the softness of sheets and wishing someone were with him. The thoughts almost always lead to a round of touching himself and thinking of a certain green-eyed hunter. 

He can’t look Dean in the eye, on those mornings.

The list of things he loves continues here, with feathery pancakes and the syrup Dean finds disgusting but buys anyway because Cas adores it. He loves the softness of pancakes and Deans morning flush as he stuffs himself full of greasy bacon. Cas smiles at Sam’s disgusted face, which turns scandalized as Dean proceeds to chew with his mouth wide open. 

The atmosphere is warm and homey. The bunker smells of pancakes and greasy bacon, of the coffee Sam swears by, and if Castiel leans close enough, he can smell Deans shampoo. He feels secure in a way he has not felt since his fledgling days.

“ Okay people. Time to grip the bull by his horns.” Dean slams down his coffee cup, thankfully emptied, and stands up, looking extremely serious. “Who’s gonna wash the dishes?”

They stare at the pile in the sink. It is full of used cutlery and plates, testimony of the fact that they had spent the past few days researching and hunting. Sam’s lip seemingly curls at the thought of touching those plates, so he proposes a challenge.

“The one that loses rock-paper-scissors has to do it.” He sees Dean despair a little.

“But that ain’t fair Sammy! See, Cas doesn’t know the rules and it’d be pretty inconsiderate to do this to him.” Despite his whining he is grinning, a toothy affair that has Castiel flushed and happy on his toes, wishing to reach out and thumb the edge of his lips. He catches Cas watching him and his smile widens, a reddish tint on his cheeks.

He feels a smile play on his own, Deans good mood a contagious disease no cure is known for.

“Dean you do realize I have lived long enough to witness the creation of the first star. The game of Wuzazu is barely more than 2200 years old.” He does not mention that he used to play this game with his brethren.

“Hey. You didn’t know what sex is either. I can’t guess the extent of your knowledge.”

In the end they settle it with a game of rock-paper-scissors. It went on for 12 rounds which had Dean contemplating and asking if Cas has his powers and Sam throwing bitch faces. Naturally, Dean is the one who washes the dishes.

Castiel watches with fond wonder as Dean scrubs the food from one of the bigger knives. He realized Dean lets Sam win at rock-paper-scissors a few months into knowing the brothers. It is a quality Castiel greatly admires and loves in Dean Winchester. Even if his willingness to sacrifice himself sometimes rises to ridiculous heights.  
Dean Winchester is, in Castiel’s opinion, his Father’s most beautiful and accomplished creation.

He is the one thing Castiel will love to ruination. The one thing he will love until the dissolution of the universe, the expiration of stars. Because Dean Winchester is worthy, despite his flaws, despite the mistakes he had made.

He is the embodiment of humanity. Of its flaws, and its beauty. 

In the presence and influence of Dean Winchester, he started feeling. He started feeling, and wishing, and fighting. 

And now, sitting behind a wooden table, drinking stale coffee and looking at Dean scraping what looks like rotten chicken from a plate, Castiel makes a decision. He will court Dean Winchester. He will make him see the light, like he had made Castiel see the light. He will worship Dean, in the way a being as magnificent as him should be worshipped. 

He stands, empty coffee cup in hand, and makes his way over to where Dean is still struggling with the chicken. He presses his right hip to the counter at Dean’s elbow and hands him the cup. Dean takes it without even looking at him, grumbling something about Sam and BIO chicken. 

Castiel leans in a bit further. Dean stills.

“Cas, I thought you got the personal space issue down.” His voice is calm yet has a strained quality to it, and Castiel feels victorious. He moves his hand from where it’s hanging uselessly at his side to Deans back, pressing slightly at the lowest point of his spine. It draws a shudder Castiel can feel all over his body, but the trembling is not his own. The sound Dean makes, throaty and deep, beckons like a sirens call. Castiel moves even closer, the front of his body wholly pressed against Dean’s side. He sees Dean closing his eyes, body tense and vibrating, as if he’s holding back from something. 

Castiel really cannot have that.

He leans in and brushes his nose against Dean’s earlobe, puffing a small gust of air down Dean’s neck. As if on cue, he feels Dean stiffen, back ramrod straight when everything about the other obviously isn’t. He raises the hand idly rubbing Dean’s lower back to cup his neck, just below the hairline. Procuring some final courage, he turns Dean’s head just so his nose meets Castiel’s, just so apple-greens meet cornflower blues. They stare at each other, lost in the quelling intimacy of the moment. Dean’s breath is shallow, his eyes are wide and green, even in the artificial light and Castiel feels his heartbeat running a mile per second. When he opens his mouth, he can see Dean’s Adam’s apple bob, and he almost forgets what he wants to say.

“Maybe, Dean, I don’t want to ‘have it down’.”

He leaves on wobbly legs with an erratic heartbeat, not possessing the guts to turn around. He misses the sight of Dean sliding to the ground, holding his neck, his cheeks glowing crimson.


	2. Rupture

The next week Dean visits every bar in the town. He picks up every woman blond enough, every woman brown-eyed enough.

Cas close. Close enough to see the unfamiliar flecks of colour high on his cheekbones probably gained by working in the sun, close enough to feel the breath smelling of pie and burgers, close enough to feel the warmth, so real and constant at his side. Close enough to _touch_ and _feel_ and _take_.

_Claim_.

He had stopped this particular swirl of thoughts the moment they had appeared, back in the big but stuffy kitchen, back where Cas lit up every nerve with blue flames, where he made his muscles contract with want and his bones rattle with the need to move closer.

He remembers the next few moments only hazily, lost in a maze of thoughts he had ever since Rhonda Hurley.

He isn’t gay. He knows that, sitting in a bar with cheesy music and an even cheesier setup, on the lookout for more brown-eyed blondes. Sure, he had had a few slip-ups in the past concerning his line of appreciation for the human physique, but he had always written it off as sizing up any rivals. He had stopped the moment his father had taken notice of it, and continued a few months after his death, because after all habits are shirts of steel.

And Cas had been no different.

Truth be told, in the first moments of meeting the angel, in the barn full of bouncing bolts and electrifying eyes, he had felt a flame take his spine, had felt a zing along his fingers that had nothing to do with instinctive trigger pulling.

_He was addicted before he knew it._

“Fuck this shit.“

He stands, slaps some bills on the counter and strides to the door. He notices some interested looks, all of them too blue, all of them too dark-haired.

The fresh air outside clears the haze of alcohol in his mind. In a few minutes, he’s driving down the road, in a direction opposite of home, opposite of Sam’s questioning looks and Cas’ recently sad and down-turned eyes. Every night Dean had come home in the week past, smelling of perfume, covered in lipstick, he had encountered Cas sitting in the living room either reading a book or staring at the blank space beside the TV.

He never said a word, just looked at Dean and went to bed.

Now driving past what looks like a giant baby statue with a diaper on the wrong end of its body, he contemplates the words Cas whispered standing with his front pressed against Dean’s side, with questing hands and a rippling breath.

_“Maybe, Dean, I don’t want to ‘Have it down’.”_

The words struck a chord long buried, and he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about them. His only reprieve has been sex, his body made numb by pleasure. He fucked every woman as different from Cas as possible without actually leaving the human race, escaping with a kiss in a hurry to get away from denial in human form.

He understands that Cas, now a human, has human needs. And in Dean’s head, human needs translate to three things: food, drinks, and sex.

The baby human, as he had taken to dubbing Cas in his head, is getting two out of three things from Dean and Sam. So it’s only normal that Cas would come looking for the third thing to either of the Winchester brothers.

_I’m only glad it isn’t Sam Cas has chosen._

The thought sneaks into his head unbidden, an image of his brother and Cas, bodies sweaty and moving in tandem, Cas gasping, high pitched and pleasured.

He forces the images to a stop, barely supressing the need to vomit at the imagined sight of his little brother in any activity which involved nakedness that went beyond the belt, but also because of the sight of Cas in anothers arms.

He stops the Impala at the roadside and leans his forehead against the steering wheel.

Ever since Purgatory, heck, ever since he had met the angel, he knew something had shifted inside him. Maybe he hadn't noticed back then, lost in a mirage of heroism he had built out of convenience. But the illusion had fractured the moment his little brother's heart stopped beating, and he had been forced to accept the fangs bared by reality, felt them bite into his flesh, tear at his soul.

He had died that way, taken by an illusion not his own.

In the end, he had shattered the glorified future with the help of a brother in blood, and another one in arms.

_We've been through much together, you and I._

And isn't that just the goddamned truth.

* * *

 He visits another bar, closer to the bunker, and gets piss-drunk.

* * *

 When he gets home, he finds Cas standing in front of the refrigerator, holding a glass and orange juice. Somewhere, deep in his alcohol addled mind, he thinks Cas looks at home; pijama bottoms he has likely borrowed from Sam, worn from years of use but still tight enough, and an old LedZeppelin shirt he has likely borrowed from Dean for an indefinite amount of time.

It hugs him in all the right places, and Dean feels a sense of _want_ and _need_ so strong, his alcohol sponged brain blacks out for a moment.

When he escapes the blackness, he has Cas pinned to the refrigerator, the torrenting orange juice an unimportant background sound.

Cas' eyes are ablaze, and there really is no other word for it.

_If he had been in the right state of mind he would've seen trembling hope and infinite love, and he would have been shaken._

Instead, his unfocused eyes find the plush bow of a desired mouth, and as longing dictates, lips follow. Soon after, he feels Cas' stiffened body relax and long fingered hands tangle in his hair. His body feels alive like it hadn't in a while and he gets lost in euphoria, almost missing the words his angel is whispering against his lips, his nose, his cheekbone, meaning lost in shudders.

"Dean, what-." A particulary delicious piece of skin right below Cas' collar bone makes Dean go insane, the smell of earth and ozone and everything the being in his arms embodies making Dean think of affection and hate and desire and longing and love and _home_ , above all _home_.

He whimpers, and if he will remember anything tommorrow, he will know this was the moment he broke completely and wholly, his world shattering and rebuilding itself anew, because after this, nothing will ever be the same for him.

He stills, right below the roughness of Cas, taking deep breaths.

They do nothing for him.

"I want you... I... I need you Cas."

They stumble into bed, a mess of tangled limbs and joined lips.

They make love that night.

* * *

 

Next morning, when Dean wakes up, he feels the mother of all hangovers already creeping in the corner, ready to attack him with shrill ringing and a throbbing head. When he turns his head, keeping his eyes closed because, even though his room has no windows, there must be light somewhere and that would do nothing to help his condition. When he feels soft breaths stirring his hair, he begrudgingly opens his eyes, and what he sees makes his heart still and coldness take his spine, a quiet shock that would have him jumping out of bed if not for the careful warmth creeping along his belly and heart, making his eyes tear and his nose feel strangely tingly.

"What are you still doing here?"

* * *

 

_"I love you as certain things are to be loved; in secret, between the shadow and the soul."_


End file.
